Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

I don't have access to the book right now, but LBJ told Warren that the aim of the investigation was to present a satisfying conclusion to the assassination. Which is to say that a finding of foreign involvement would be troubling, to say the least. What if they followed a trail that led to Cuba or the USSR? I'm not saying that's where it would have led—I'm not especially persuaded by any of the theories as to who was behind it—but I can appreciate LBJ not wanting to consider the possibility, especially coming so soon after the October Missile Crisis. So, yeah, the goal was to wrap it up and so a lone nut solution was the best way of doing so. One guy with a grudge and he's already dead—easy peasy, nice and sleazy. It's worth noting that, privately, neither LBJ nor Richard Russell, who was on the Commission panel, didn't believe it was Oswald alone (some have also claimed that RFK didn't believe the Warren Commission findings either). But there was value in not even going down that road. So one doesn't have to weave intricate dark conspiracies to posit why the Warren Commission was formed and behaved as it did—they were there to keep the peace.

That said, even beyond the bizarre physics and forensics, everything about Oswald is just fucking weird. The guy was a Marine working in intelligence, defects to the Soviet Union and presumably tells them what he knows, changes his mind after a couple years and comes back to the US, and not only is he not chucked into jail as a traitor, he's debriefed for a couple hours and sent on his way. What the fuck is up with that? Maybe it was all innocent or SOP, but that seems weird as fuck. And then, when he's arrested for killing JFK, this supposed ideological zealot doesn't proudly claim responsibility and spout some Commie manifesto, he denies everything. Again, what the fuck is up with that? That's not what zealots do. They're proud of what they've done because it's for a greater good in their eyes. Perhaps Oswald was different, but that's just another oddity to account for. As I said, I have no idea who was behind it, but the Warren Commission's findings are not persuasive at all. From a historian's perspective, their methodology was awful because they started from a conclusion—Oswald did it alone—and then picked thru and arranged the evidence to form that narrative. But it is understandable why they did it.